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Trinidad and Tobago

Long-ruling PNM returns to power in Trinidad and Tobago

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rowley

What does Trinidad and Tobago have in common with Alberta?
trinidadtobago

In elections in both places, voters are punishing governments for tanking oil prices, a global trend that Alberta’s 44-year-long Tory government was no less powerless to halt than prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the first female leader of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Her party, the United National Congress (UNC), lost its bid for reelection after parliamentary elections on the dual-island state on September 7.

Instead, the People’s National Movement (PNM), the party that has controlled government in the Caribbean nation for all but 16 years since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, will return to power. The country’s new prime minister, Keith Rowley (pictured above), is a 65-year-old geologist who served in the House of Representatives in 1991 and has held several ministerial portfolios, including agriculture, housing, and trade and industry. Though Manley comes from the same generation as Patrick Manning, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1995 and, for the second time, from 2001 to 2010, Manning fired Rowley from the cabinet in 2008 for ‘hooligan behaviour.’

Like many countries in the Caribbean, the years since the global financial crisis of 2008-09 have been met with sluggish economic growth, rising unemployment in the face of already-high joblessness and rising public debt levels. Since 2010, Trinidadian debt has nearly doubled from around 26% to just over 50%. Nearly one-third of its exports come from natural gas and, together with petroleum, energy accounts for 60% of the country’s exports. So falling prices for both commodities are already taxing what had been tepid growth during Persad-Bissessar’s term in office. Rowley inherits the thankless task of cutting the country’s budget in the two months ahead at a time when oil prices show now signs of improvement.

Combined with the Alberta precedent, Trinidad’s election matters as another data piece suggesting that incumbents in states with energy-dependent economies are in trouble — a foreboding thought for Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper and for ruling classes in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Venezuela who face elections later in 2015. Continue reading Long-ruling PNM returns to power in Trinidad and Tobago →

Guyana

PPP narrowly defeated by Guyana’s opposition coalition

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granger

It’s easy to forget about the northeastern corner of South America, collectively known as ‘The Guianas,’ which includes two countries (Guyana and Suriname), a French overseas holding (French Guiana) and, sometimes, the sparsely populated eastern Guyana region of Venezuela and Amapá state in northeastern Brazil.Guyana Flag

Those two sovereign countries, Guyana and Suriname, formerly British and Dutch colonies, respectively, are home to just over 1.3 million people. French Guiana, an overseas department of France, and one of the Western Hemisphere’s last vestiges of colonialism, is home to just another 250,000 people.

Even by the standards of Latin America, which is arguably underpopulated (especially in contrast to China, India and other parts of southeastern Asia), the Guianas are some of the least population-dense places on earth. Guyana, home to just 750,000 people, has a population density of around 9.5 per square mile. To put that into perspective, it compares to densities of around 37 for Argentina, 62 for Brazil, 85 for the United States and 158 for Mexico.

Earlier this year, however, Exxon Mobil claimed it discovered offshore oil deposits that could boost the country’s economy, though attempts to extract the oil could draw Venezuelan ire. Nevertheless, the region remains relatively underdeveloped and Guyana is one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, despite gold and bauxite deposits and steady rice and sugar production. More than 50% of its native population has emigrated — only Nicaragua and Haiti have lower per-capita GDPs.

That’s part of the reason that former army general David Granger (pictured above) led a multi-ethnic coalition to power in elections on May 11.

It’s the first transition of power since 1992, when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) dominated the country’s post-socialist turn to democratic politics. PPP officials, including former president Donald Ramotar, still refuse to concede their narrow defeat, even as Granger was sworn in over the weekend as Guyana’s new president. Traditionally, the PPP has depended on votes from the ethnic Indian community in Guyana. While Granger’s coalition won the traditional support of the Afro-Guyanese community, the multi-ethnic patina of the coalition bolstered his claim to destroy race-based politics in the oft-forgotten country.  Continue reading PPP narrowly defeated by Guyana’s opposition coalition →